270 LORD GRIMTHORP 
This remark includes furniture and architecture, for in all 
departments of these we are in a region of what man frames out of 
Nature—not of what he finds and admires in it. In painting and 
sculpture we are in a complex region—one, it is true, of what man 
produces, but of what he produces more or less in imitation of what 
he finds in Nature and admires in it. The reason why we so 
seldom see beauty in implements or machinery is because that in 
them natural forms are so seldom reproduced, the product required 
being one of which Nature has not given the mould. ‘The asser- 
tion that science has done nothing for beauty would be absurd, but 
not so absurd as the assertion that Nature has done nothing for 
it. What science hasidone for it was subsequentito what Nature 
had done, and totaily dependent upon it, whereas what Nature did 
for it was done ere science began to be. 
In any sense of the word “beauty,” to which even the lowest 
philosophical value can be attached, it must mean not anything 
either in the object taken alone, or in the subject taken alone ; not 
merely some quality in an object without us which prompts. us to 
say “ Beautiful,” and not merely some faculty within us which 
recognises that quality, and feels admiration of it. Beauty no more 
means either of these apart, than rainbow means water, air, or 
sunlight, apart from one another. It'is the synthesis of all that 
makes rainbow, and it is the synthesis of certain qualities of body 
external to us, and certain faculties of mind internal to us, which 
creates that state of delight which utters itself in the word beauty. 
All the stars in the sky would never give origin to the idea of 
beauty if they shone only upon wood and stone. No more would 
they give origin to the human idea of beauty if they shone only 
into the eyes of toads. But they shine into no human eyes without 
giving rise to that idea—an idea which gathers to itself intellectual, 
emotional, and active associations according to the grade of the 
mind in which it is awakened. In contrast with these natural 
objects, all the slag heaps in the Black Country by day, and all the 
furnaces by night, never gave rise to the idea and emotion of 
beauty, whether they addressed themselves to the eyes of an 
Englishman or of a Japanese, of an artist or of a cowboy. 
Into certain objects Nature has put something calculated to 
excite in man a pleasure which makes him say “ Beautiful” ; into 
man Nature has put the capacity of recognising this quality in the © 
object, of feeling the pleasure, of naming it, and of uttering the 
name. But the object and the man may be billions of miles 
distant one from the other, and till they are brought into communi- 
cation, into presence, by some connecting medium between them, 
